Oyster shooters from the shell

Eric BorzinoApril 27, 2010

This past weekend, two of the contributors and original Peck the Beak dinner mates got married! It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony and easily one of the happiest & most fun weekends of my life. Thank you guys for everything and congratulations! You both are phenomenal.

As amazing and joyous blast a wedding ceremony is, one of the highlights is the food – especially if it involves a raw seafood bar. No wedding is complete without it, possibly. And this was no exception. There were enough oysters for Kobayashi, the famous competitive eater, and then some. All those gorgeous mullouscs, all lined up, made me think of a concoction we came up while at the engagement party a year earlier – a real oyster shooter.

Oyster shooters from the shell with lukewarm vodka is an adventurous and fun way to get a party hopping

When one thinks of an oyster shooter, it normally looks like this:

Oyster shooter from rick's flickr stream

As awesome as these are, but I wouldn’t recommend on a half dozen of them during dinner …. trust me, this is not the real deal. The best parts of an oyster are missing – its shell and all that briney, sandy, and gritty awesomeness lurking inside it. Eat the shell!

Shucking and sucking down raw oysters is not for everyone and surely those that aren’t fans walk around in their lives with a vast empty void – they don’t know what they are missing. A funny economics quote about the monetary system as we know it about accepting paper as currency/legal tender is “and they say that the first man to eat an oyster was crazy”. Indeed. How starving a human being must have been to have decided to break open an oyster, look at its gooky insides, and say “oh well” and slurp it down? Starving as he must have been, he’s also a genius that we owe much homage too.

The slurpage is one of the most important aspects of eating an oyster – it is fun, it is sexual, and it also makes it taste so much better. So why would anyone want to forgo the best part of eating a raw oyster by eliminating it from the oyster shooter? Idiots! That is why we came up with this drink at the engagement party – one of the greatest drinks of all time. It is simple, it will become the life of the party, and it is like crack so prepared to be addicted. There’s no way one can have only one.

Instructions on how to prepare and enjoy a real raw oyster shot

Make sure one is outdoors and preferably close to some body of water to catch that breeze and smell

Shuck an oyster delicately, so that all the inside juices don’t splatter all over the place. Also be sure the oyster is from the East Coast, as they are much smaller and less meaty than its friends from the West Coast in addition to having more salty brine taste to them. West Coast oysters are like mini filet mignons with a sweeter taste … which is great but not conducive for our purposes today

Spice it up any way one pleases – squirt of lemon, dash of hot sauce, a smidgen of horseradish, or a dabbing of champagne-shallot vinegar

Then fine the cheapest vodka around and make sure it is luke warm (want the contrast of cold, slippery raw oyster + briny juices with the warm vodka)

Pour in a generous amount of vodka, don’t skimp skipper

Give it a second for the vodka to collaborate with the oyster and its juices

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